From the Editor: During the memorial service
Dr. Jernigan's wife Mary Ellen, his brother Lloyd, and his daughter Marie each spoke of
the man they had known and loved:

Kenneth and Mary Ellen Jernigan

Mary Ellen Jernigan

In the months, the weeks, the days before his
death, Dr. Jernigan and I talked of many thingsone of which was that this gathering
which has brought us together today would soon occur and that this time it would be I not
he standing before you at the microphone. So we talked about what to do. I made a
suggestion or two, which he vetoed. "Let others do that, or you do it later. What you
must try to do on this daywhat people will want you to do; what I want you to do is
to talk about me me as you knew me." At the time it seemed a fairly simple
directive. It seemed less so as I began to think about carrying it out.

For I was not yet twenty-one when I first met Dr.
Jernigan, and the whole of my adult life is his creation. My very first encounter came in
the form of a vibrant booming voice on the other end of a telephone line: "I
understand you have just been initiated into Phi Beta Kappa. That tells me one of two
things you've either got some brains, or you're very good at bluffing people into
believing you do. If you've got the time and inclination to find out which, I do."
Well I had the time and inclination, and I was hooked. Thirty-three years have
passed years in which I had the good fortune to share in a special way the life and
work of this unusual man.

I will leave it to others to recite the facts and
accomplishment of five decades of inspired service and leadershipto chronicle, to
evaluate, to place in historical perspective.

My task is something else, and I would frame it
like this:

In the all too brief year that has passed since
Dr. Jernigan's illness first became apparent, there has been an enormous outpouring of
sentiment. It has come from across this country and from abroad. It has come from blind
people, yes. But it has come from an astonishingly large number of sighted people also.
And the messagesometimes expressed with supremely literate eloquence; sometimes with
elegant simplicity; sometimes with halting difficultyhas been essentially the same
and very basic: this man made a real difference in my life; the world is a better place
for his having lived in it. So what I have been asking myself is whywhy did this man
have such a universally profound effect upon so many?

First I thought, Well, it's obvious. You look at
how he lived. Next I thought, No! It's obvious. You look at how he died. And finally I
said, Wait! It's the same thing. It was when that thought crystallized that the answers
began to come. When a man knows he has but a year to live, how he chooses to spend that
year tells you something. And if it happens that he chooses to spend that year as he spent
the rest of his years, it tells you even more.

So let us look together at Dr. Jernigan's last
year.

When we do, we see a man who spent his birthday,
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Valentine's Day in the hospital and made them joyous
occasions for all; a man who, having been told in the morning to expect to die within the
year, spent the afternoon comforting and reassuring those around him; who on that same day
brought together the delegates of the North America/Caribbean Region of the World Blind
Union by conference telephone to arrange an orderly transition to a new President; and who
later that same evening initiated a vast exploration of all possible alternative
therapiesfacing the future with hope and belief and insisting that the rest of us do
so also.

Over the next two weeks he assembled the
collective leadership of the organized blind movement and began making far-ranging,
long-term plans for the years to come. Immediately he began a grueling regimen to fight
the diseasefacing with resolute discipline each day's conglomeration of needles,
pills, vitamins, supplements, intravenous tubing, breathing machines, detoxification
procedures, and of course the ever-present nausea. He did what he had to do and took care
to shield others from knowing the physical agony of it all.

With the construction of three levels of
magnificent sky decks, he brought to final completion the twenty-year-long transformation
of a once dilapidated South Baltimore factory building into the sparkling facility we now
know as the National Center for the Blind and then startled us all with a bold new vision
to undertake the construction of the National Research and Training Institute for the
Blinda 175,000-square-foot, five-story building which will position us to take full
advantage of the opportunities which will abound in the coming millennium.

He summoned the strength to cause the first
million dollars to be committed to the capital campaign and to oversee preparation of the
detailed architectural plan for the new facility. He commissioned construction of the
three-dimensional model you will see on display today. He examined the model with his own
hands, making final adjustments to the plans as he did so.

He fought his way back from a nearly fatal
bacterial infection, donned his tuxedo, selected and served to good friends the finest
wines from his cellar, and returned the next day for another round at the North Carolina
clinic. He edited two final Kernel Booksvolume number 14, Gray Pancakes and Gold
Horses, and volume 15, To Touch the Untouchable Dream.

Not wanting any part of our home ever to become
inaccessible to him, he added an elevator, taking great delight in designing it to appear
as if it had always been part of the 154-year-old structure. Since he could now reach the
roof by the new elevator, he built a deck there. And while he was at it, he revamped the
heating and air conditioning system and installed for me a restaurant-capacity stove
complete with an indoor gas grill.

He added to his collections: wines, liqueurs,
coins, music boxes, old time radio tapes, and most especially his carved onyx glasses. He
negotiated and signed contracts at first-class hotels for the year 2000 and 2001 National
Conventionskeeping the single room rates still under $60.

He served as National Convention Chairman at his
forty-seventh consecutive National Federation of the Blind convention a convention
he described as very nearly perfect and during which he spoke to the Parents Seminar, the
Scholarship Class, the Engineers Division, the Cultural Exchange and International Program
Committee, and the Resolutions Committee; roamed the Exhibit Hall; delivered a major
address; gave an award at the Banquet; presented the audit and financial reports; and was
moved to tears by Lloyd Rasmussen's singing of the Technology Song.

He re-examined his relationship with God, a
process which led us both to the Catholic Church, and more specifically to St. Joseph's
Monastery Parish and to Father Gregory Paul.

Then, with the fading of summer into early fall,
came also the fading of any reasonable hope for survival. As the weakness and pain
increased, he accepted what was to come with dignity and grace and with the utmost care
and concern for those around him, for the organization he had spent his life serving, and
for the broader field whose unity and advancement he had done so much to promote. He
pulled forth reserves of strength to complete the things he wanted to finish:

He saw to the final details of the construction
project at our home, organizing a massive top-to-bottom, inside-and-out cleaning project,
taking particular delight in learning that the front steps, which had always been thought
to be a nondescript, blackish stone, were really gleaming white marble underneath, and
insisting that they be shown off to all.

He visited with friends and colleagues who came
to say good-bye, and as always he fed peoplein our dining room, in our yard, on our
roof, at the National Center, at his favorite restaurants when he could manage the
strength to go out and with carry-out from those same restaurants when he became unable to
leave home. He took enormous pleasure in serving his most prized wines and feeding his
friends.

Mrs. Jernigan's favorite picture of
Dr. Jernigan, 1985

He hosted a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary
celebration for Dr. and Mrs. Maurer though he himself was too weak to attend. He spent a
last night at the National Center for the Blind, conducted a seminar for leaders of the
National Council of State Agencies for the Blind, and the next morning took one final walk
on the new Skydeck.

When, through a fluke in the medical system, he
learned that the cancer had spread throughout his bones before his own physician received
the report, he found himself gently breaking the news to the doctor and offering
consolation. Upon learning that the sculptor who had been commissioned to create a bronze
bust of him had (out of concern for his failing strength) been told he must work entirely
from photographs, he insisted on dressing in full regalia and sitting for him in person.

He sent Dr. Maurer and me to Atlanta to make
preparations for next summer's convention, giving us detailed instructions as to what to
do. He selected and had wrapped the presents he wanted to give this Christmas. He called
Ernie Imhoff to thank him for a beautifully perceptive article in the Baltimore Sun.

He inquired daily about the well-being of his
kittens and gave instructions for their care. He moved both of our birthdays forward so as
not to miss them. He talked and planned with me and Dr. and Mrs. Maurer about what he
hoped for David and Dianna in the years to come.

He spent large blocks of time with his brother
Lloyd, with whom he shared an ever-stronger bond and for whose character, accomplishments,
and integrity he had a deep and abiding respect. He shared a last precious evening with
his daughter Marie (Toinette as he always called her) and her husband Tony Cobb.

He had long, unhurried conversations with our
President, Marc Maurer, in whom he had total, complete, and absolute trust; and in whose
development and emergence as the widely-respected leader of the organized blind movement
he took an unremitting joybelieving to the very depth of his being that whatever
part he himself had played in that development and emergence was his own most cherished
achievement.

He willed himself the strength to travel to the
Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., to receive the Winston Gordon Award. There, in that
beautiful setting, surrounded by family, friends, and colleagues, he made what he knew and
we all knew would be his last public appearance. Though weak and in visible pain, he
strode to the podium, where with a touch of humor, with elegance and simplicity, he spoke
to us as he always didof the brightness of the future.

This was Dr. Jernigan's last year. Do we find in
it an answer? Why the great impact of this man? This man who had the supreme confidence
and grace to die exactly as he had lived?

Yes! I think we do. We find it in hope and
belief, energy and intellect, planning and purpose, discipline and drudgery, care and
compassion, loyalty and love. But above all we find it in an infectious joy that took each
and every moment of life and made of it a treasure to be shared with others.

To the question, "Do you miss him?" the
answer is of course, excruciatingly so. Every minute. Every day. But the answer also is,
how can I? He taught me to think, and he is present in every thought I have. He taught me
to love, and he is present in everything I love. Under God's guidance he formed and shaped
and molded the world I live in and those who live in it, and it and they are all around
mevibrant and aliveas is he in each of us and in the work he left us to
finish.

As for those treasured moments: here is one for
us all to share. Near death, in a voice weak, but clear with conviction Dr. Jernigan said
these things:

I have lived to see the plans for our new
building far enough along to know that it will be done.

I have lived to see unity on our own terms in the
blindness field in North America.

I have lived to see Marc Maurer come into the
full maturity of leadership.

As I draw to the end, I don't feel I've left any
loose ends.

I am content. I am at peace.

But what about us? Can we be at peace about this?
Perhaps not all of the time and not just yet. But neither can we fail to carry forward the
legacy he left usto live with joy, to make of life's moments treasures to be shared.
He would expect us to do no less.

And so I close with the words of this American
Indian verseone the two of us read together and found of comfort: